


Bloom

by stephanericher



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 08:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7795189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to keep secrets here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloom

It's hard to keep secrets here; It’s hard to keep the smallest things under wraps, an extra meal or a late-night practice session or the perhaps-undesired results from messing with the castle’s systems—despite the castle’s size it’s only the seven of them to keep track of and despite the odds someone’s always underfoot (and if they’re not one of the mice definitely is) and despite the practicality of discretion they’re not supposed to keep secrets from each other in the first place. (Shiro’s the one who’s said it the most and he’s meant it every time.) And even though this isn’t a secret they plan on keeping indefinitely, it’s a secret they’re keeping right now, and they’re not planning to announce to everyone they’re dating at dinner tomorrow.

Not when behind closed doors the pad of Keith’s thumb hesitates on Shiro’s palm, and Shiro’s mouth feels as if it’s been wired shut (and even if it weren’t he’d have no idea what to say), and the pressure in the room is as high as if they’re in a ship that’s just gaining Earth’s atmosphere, coming in too hot and fast only it’s not really going anywhere. But if they don’t do anything they’re going to crash before they’ve even done anything, said anything.

“Shiro—” Keith starts, just as Shiro says, “Keith—”

The tension falters and a relieved sort of half-smile breaks out on Keith’s face. Shiro’s fingers slip their way between Keith’s, and Keith takes a deep breath.

“You go first.”

Shiro shakes his head; he’d just be stumbling over half-formed thoughts in an attempt to get them out there. Keith looks at him for a second, as if assessing something, but then he speaks  
“If you’re not comfortable with this, with us like this, then—I understand.”  
His face is back to stark and serious, even more than it usually is (even more than it was right after they’d gotten here and he’d acted like cutting himself any slack was taboo) and the tension's rising again like a wave and no, this is absolutely not where Shiro wants this to go.   
“Keith,” he says again.

Keith waits, and Shiro pulls his hand closer.

“It might be rough for a while, but I want this. I want to figure it out with you, so just bear with it?”

For a second he wonders if the words are too dismissive, if they don’t really get to what Keith sees as the problem, but then he nods.

“Okay.”

And maybe, even with the low odds of keeping it just between the two of them for very long and their combined impatience, this is going to work. Shiro tugs on Keith’s hand and Keith lets himself be reeled in closer until his face is pressed into the crook of Shiro’s neck. His heartbeat is hammering faster than a drumroll, and when Shiro squeezes his hand he squeezes back. They’re going to be fine.

* * *

“Good work, team.”

Hunk and Lance give Shiro the thumbs up; Pidge flashes a grin; even Keith looks proud. And they should all be proud; they’ve been struggling with this particular set of team logic exercises for ages but today they’d gone through the whole stack one by one and cleared the lot, each member contributing more than their share and each perspective pulling the situation more into focus.

Shiro hasn’t really looked away from Keith’s face; he’s still half-smiling but there’s something off and it takes Shiro a second to register. His hair is getting a little too long again; one lock’s managed to fall over his right eye and without thinking Shiro reaches over to push it back. And then he remembers the other three paladins, but they’re already halfway to the door and Shiro’s fingers are still in Keith’s hair.

“Hey,” says Keith, and he halfheartedly ducks his head away (his cheeks have acquired a pinkish tint, which might have something to do with that).

Shiro jerks his head toward the door and Keith nods; they’re still far enough behind the others (not too far to hear Lance bragging about his skills, Pidge stomping on his logic, and Hunk complaining that this is just like the academy when they used to talk about tests after already taken them). But that’s not what fills the silence between Shiro and Keith; that’s something else that settles in quietly like a cat on the sofa. The gap between them narrows, and Keith’s hand brushes against Shiro’s once, then twice. He’s looking ahead, but his smile’s even fuller now.

* * *

Shiro’s not expecting the doors of the facility to blast open, and certainly not off the hinges and into his chest, and the explosion doesn’t give him much time to react. He’s flying through the air and just as soon as his brain is getting used to it, his back is slammed into a wall and the wind’s knocked out of him. He tries to make a sound, but nothing comes out other than gasping; he can’t take a full breath even as he’s inhaling as much as he can.

“Shiro?”

He can’t answer the voice in his helmet; again it says his name and then the transmission breaks in the middle of a syllable. Shit. They’re going to find him, take him prisoner; they’ll take the black lion, too. He tries to get to his feet but they won’t comply, and then a hand grasps his arm and pulls; it could be friend or foe but Shiro’s first priority is still trying to gasp down mouthfuls of dusty air.

“Shiro!”

He’s finally pulled upright and face-to-face with Keith.

“Are you okay?”

He nods, tries to point to his throat, still gasping.

“Can you breathe?”

Shiro nods again, more vigorously.

“Try…catch…”

The words are barely hisses from his throat, masked by the sounds of the rolling rubble and further explosions.

“Come on,” says Keith, and he wraps Shiro’s arm around his shoulders and starts half-dragging him down the corridor. Shiro wills his legs to move; he’s sort of breathing now but he still can’t talk but what matters is pulling his weight, trusting that Keith knows the way out.

“Yeah, I’ve got him. Go, we’re right behind you,” he’s saying, and then the transmission has to have ended because he’s talking to Shiro again.

“Shiro? Are you still breathing?”

“Yes,” Shiro says, and this time his voice makes a real sound (a half-croak but it’ll do just fine).

But the voice he’s more concerned with is Keith’s, anyway; there’s a ragged edge in it like a rusty razor, one that’s never been there no matter how many times he’s asked Shiro if he’s okay or where he is. It’s fear, fear that Keith hasn’t disguised, or can’t disguise, and he’s not just saying this as a teammate.

And this relationship shouldn’t bleed over to the team, to Voltron; it shouldn’t but it already has and maybe there will be time to think about that later but that time isn’t now, not when the ship rocks with another explosion and they stumble into the open chamber with their waiting lions.

“I’m good to go,” Shiro says, and he lets go of Keith’s shoulders.

(He’s good to make it into the lion at least, and from there everything has to be fine.)

“I’ll hold you to that,” says Keith. “Go!”

They dash the remaining distance across the chamber and Shiro feels like he might pass out at the controls, but the black lion already knows what to do (Shiro can’t say how they make their way back to the castle just in time to get through the next wormhole, but somehow it happens).

When they debrief (after Keith makes sure Shiro’s gotten his injuries checked out and he’s fine) Keith sits close, his thigh a hair’s width away from Shiro’s on the couch. No matter who’s speaking, his eyes always flicker back to Shiro, and were it anyone else Shiro might start to get a little annoyed. But when he gives Keith a brief smile and Keith returns it, a warm feeling spreads across his chest like hot coffee on a cold morning.

* * *

When Shiro walks by the training deck, he’s not surprised to hear a familiar mix of clanks and thumps coming from the inside. He opens the door and his guess is confirmed; Keith’s working out alone again. He’s come to spend most of whatever downtime they get fighting the gladiators or just exercising on his own, always careful not to overdo it but always pushing his upper limits and raising the bar. And sometimes he shows off a bit, too; those fancy sword moves won’t be of much use in battle when his opponent’s speed isn’t set exactly the way he’s used to and there’s definitely no reason to war a shirt that tight other than to show the movements of every muscle in his back as he forces the gladiator into a corner (in Shiro’s opinion, that’s his best angle, and if this is bait he’s fallen for it but he’s enjoying this too much to really care).

Keith twirls the sword again and Shiro’s eyes aren’t quick enough to catch exactly what it’s doing as the gladiator falls to the floor again. Keith’s still spinning, and he finishes up with a high flourish that brings him around to face Shiro. It’s a move that’s both unnecessary and exciting, enough to make Shiro want to reach for a weapon of his own.

“Hey,” says Keith.

“Hey,” says Shiro. “Mind if I join?”

“Not at all.”

Shiro sets his stance and Keith instructs the system; the gladiator moves toward them and they begin. They strike from both sides, passing the gladiator to and fro as if their weapons are badminton rackets and the gladiator is a birdie; they toy with it some more until Shiro decides to give it a finishing blow and it crumples to the floor.

They work through five more levels; only the last is somewhat challenging, too fast for the two of them to control the situation one at a time, but still slow enough for both of them to come at the gladiator at once, ramming into it from either side. It freezes, and then a few seconds later shuts down. Neither of them calls for the next level.

Sweat pours down Keith’s face, plasters his bangs against his forehead and drips from his eyelashes; that shirt of his is long since soaked through. Shiro’s slightly cognizant of the sweat on the back of his own neck, the grime coating his knees, but he’s more focused on Keith, who only seems to notice a few seconds later when he raises his eyes.

“Thanks,” Keith says. “That was fun.”

It’s only now Shiro realizes the distance between them seems smaller than the width of the gladiator. Maybe they’ve already started to close it; maybe the gladiator is thinner than he’d thought; maybe it doesn’t matter because Shiro closes the rest of it himself and presses his lips to Keith’s.

The door might still be open; someone could easily see them. At the moment, it doesn’t matter.

* * *

The ship’s ten thousand years without an operating system upgrade are apparent, but they don’t seem to be a problem until Pidge finds a half-dozen security holes just from poking around, and so they land on an out-of-the-way desert planet for a week to try and patch the issues. They all need a break, anyway, and even if they end up spending most of the time turning the system on and off to make sure it still works after yet another incremental upgrade it’s a little less stressful than saving the universe.

The sunrises on this planet are gorgeous; the light of the star shines through the atmospheric dust and makes it almost seem to glitter; Shiro had seen it by accident from his window the first morning and on purpose from a crumbling hill every morning after that. The bottom of the sun is just scraping the horizon on the fifth day and he’s about to get up when he hears footsteps behind him. Keith drops into a sitting position, less than an arm’s length away. His shoes clear troughs in the red sand, like the red sand of the desert near the academy, near where he’d been staying all that time. They haven’t talked about that much; Shiro isn’t sure Keith wants to, at least not yet. His eyes are watering in the light; he’s still not awake, staring out into the rough terrain as if he could fall right back asleep at any moment. His hand finds Shiro’s hand; his thumb traces across the lines on Shiro’s palm.

And then Shiro hears footsteps from behind him; again he turns to look. Pidge’s eyes linger on their joined hands, but then she sits down on Shiro’s other side and holds out a thermos.

“Tea? The code’s still compiling.”

Shiro declines (he’s not big on that Altean berry stuff) but Keith reaches over him to accept the thermos. Pidge and still hasn’t said anything about the two of them when Keith hands the thermos back, and when Shiro exhales he expects the breath he’s been holding to be larger. Keith’s thumb brushes over the ridge of his knuckles. The sunrise is over, but Shiro could stay here for hours.

* * *

They pull out of the mission successful, but with a margin of error that Allura and Coran agree is much too small, so the next day is a nonstop grueling practice that saps even Shiro’s remaining stamina. It works, though; they’re doubly-exhausted and running on adrenaline but they’re still staying together as Voltron and their reaction times are holding steady while their efficiency keeps climbing. But even their limits have limits, and at a certain point all of that falls off a cliff and Voltron falls apart (at least cats always land on their feet). Coran cheerfully announces that they’ve exceeded his expectations once again and they’re all too exhausted to reply that of course they did.

They should probably all just head straight to bed, but they’re too hungry not to eat and once they’re done with that they’re too stuffed to move very far, and they collapse one by one on the couches. The spot next to Keith is empty, so Shiro settles himself in and drapes his arm over Keith’s shoulders, and Keith’s already leaning into him.

“Get a room, you two,” says Hunk.

For a moment Keith’s body tenses, but just as quickly he relaxes against Shiro’s side again and yawns, and Shiro smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> ....i'm still getting used to the setting/characters and i'm 95% sure i got a bunch of details wrong so if you could point those out to me that would be great.


End file.
